I apologize for getting this post out so late, but due to the holidays, a recent passing of a family member, and the overall craziness of selling on Amazon, I have hardly had time to sit down and finish writing this post…until now.

November is over and what a whirlwind of a month it was. I mentioned in last month’s income report that I anticipated being extremely busy and that certainly came to pass. I spent a great deal of the month sourcing, shipping, and planning for Thanksgiving. I knew that I would have to take a week off from sourcing so Hubby and I made a really huge buy on the 22nd of November that resulted in 10 hours of sourcing to make up for the lack of time we would not be able to put in during the week of Thanksgiving.

Before I go any further into this income report, from here on out you may notice that I am using the pronoun “we” quite a bit more and that is because my husband now has a larger stake in my our success on Amazon. Since the end of October, he has been helping me scout and getting our purchases out the door within 24 hours. Without his help I don’t believe I would have half of the sales that I do now. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have even seen a fraction of the success I had this month because I never would have taken the leap to re-invest the money I was making from Amazon into inventory instead of extra student loan payments.

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Disclaimer:

As I preface in all of my income reports, the figures that I report below are from part-time re-selling — although this month I put in more than the 2 to 10 hours per week I usually do thanks to the holiday selling season. Most of the time that I am putting in now is done early in the morning before my daughter wakes up and at night after my daughter is put to bed. Nonetheless, my first and full-time job is still my family and my home. Re-selling is something that I do on the side to help make accelerated payments towards my student loans. I have no intentions of turning this into a full-time career — I just want to pay off my loans and enjoy a little treasure hunting while I’m at it. With that in mind, if you can dedicate full-time hours to re-selling, your numbers will in all likelihood be higher than those that I report on this blog.

With that disclaimer out of the way, lets take a look at how things went for the month of November….

eBay

Poor, poor eBay. I really wanted to list (and sell) some items, but November was so much of a whirlwind that I really neglected eBay. By Saturday evening (11/29) — just one day before the month ended — I realized that I hadn’t even listed anything on eBay so I sat down to list some items that had been photographed months prior. I managed to list three items before I got tired (…and our movie ended). By the next morning I sold one item! Woo hoo!

Since I only sold one item for the entire month, I will show a snippet of what sold, but I will not do a complete breakdown.

I sold this mug last month that had been sitting in my storage area for several months. I picked it up at an estate sale for $3 — much more than I cared to pay, but it was really cute AND it was Tinkerbell so I bought it. I completely forgot about this mug, but when I purchased it, I did photograph it immediately with the intention of listing it quickly. In the end, it sat so long that when I finally got around to listing it, I simply went by the completed listings on eBay to determine a “Buy It Now” price.

Price paid: $3.00

Sold for: $14.00 +$5.85 shipping

Profit: Who knows…pennies…well actually, it was around $6.00

(When I do an end of the year round sales wrap up, I’ll be sure to have the actual numbers.) 🙂

Honestly, this wasn’t a home run in the grand scheme of the things that I sell on eBay, but seeing as though I haven’t created a listing in almost 3 months, I’m pretty proud of myself for getting out of my eBay listing rut to get *something* up. Unfortunately, I did not meet my goal of listing an entire box of inventory like I wanted to, but I won’t beat myself up about it since I had a great month overall when it came to reselling.

Amazon Sales

November was another milestone month on the Amazon front. So much occurred that I honestly feel this section needs its own blog post, but I will try to focus on the highlights.

Lets get started with a few milestones that I met this month:

Milestone #1:I had my first $1k sales day on November 18th.

I have never reached that amount of sales prior to that day. In fact, prior to making the decision to re-invest my earnings into inventory, my highest day was $432 in gross sales which occurred back in April.

Milestone #2:I achieved the goal I set back in October to sell at least 400 units (the results are below).

So with that out of the way, here were my numbers for the month of November:

Although it would be great to say that I took $1,500 and turned it into $15,000+ thanks to buying items with a great ROI, it would not be honest. Instead, last November’s earnings are largely the result of one thing: daily payouts. I have mentioned several times before that I have the option to request daily payouts from Amazon. I requested a payout almost every day of the week in November and I continued to roll that money into buying more inventory. I believe that was the single biggest factor in being able to achieve the numbers that I did because I really didn’t have much money to start with.

Here is a snapshot of Amazon’s cut (my fees) for the month:

Lastly, I received $9722.69 in disbursements from Amazon in November:

It is important to note that between 70-80% of all those earnings went right back into purchasing new inventory. We only set aside a certain amount for other business related expenses, taxes, etc. Until we reach our desired sourcing budget, we will continue to re-invest. Once that goal is reached, all re-investing will cease, we will work with the sourcing budget we have and I will resume making extra student loan payments to get rid of those pesky loans.

Student Loan Update

It really felt awkward not having a student loan update last month. For the past 10 months, I have grown accustomed to sharing my payoff progress. Now that we grown our sourcing budget a little bit more, I have decided to pull a minimum of $100 per month and throw it towards my loans. After all, the focus of this blog is “extra student loan payments” and I need to put something extra towards my loans even if it is only $100.

With that said, I was able to make an additional $100 payment in November. Here is a snapshot of my current student loan balance:

I made an extra $100 payment towards loan 1-02 since it had the highest balance. I will focus on getting rid of this loan first and move to loan 1-03 next since it also has a 6.55% interest rate.

I don’t like seeing that number still sitting at $8k but I know that it is only a matter of time until it reaches $0. 🙂

December’s Goals

I love setting goals. Even though I only achieved 1 out of the 2 goals that I set last month, I feel that they help hold me accountable so I will continue to set them. Here are the following goals that I would love to achieve for December:

Sell at least 800 units

Sell at least 400 pairs of shoes

As you can see, I did not set a monetary sales goal. Instead, I would like to double last month’s goal of selling 400 units and I would like to increase the amount of shoes that I sell since I was recently approved to sell in that category.

I will be honest and say that I really don’t have a game plan for Christmas sales.I am still in learning mode and I don’t feel it is realistic to put pressure on myself to achieve some outlandish sales goal. I have seen so many other sellers mention items that they are selling like hot cakes and I realize that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to chase down hundreds of products across several different categories. Instead, I plan to stick with what is working for me right now and take note of what to take advantage of next year (Lord’s willing).

Moving Forward…

In terms of blogging, December will be another quiet month on my end. My days are filled with taking care of my daughter and my nights consist of sourcing with Hubby after he gets off of work and then packing and shipping everything to be picked up the next morning by UPS. I anticipate this slowing down by December 10th since I plan to switch over to merchant fulfilling “hot” items the week before Christmas. I’m not sure when I plan to stop merchant fulfilling items, but the date I’m throwing around in my head right now is December 22nd. I want to take advantage of last minute sales, but I don’t want to push it too close to Christmas since I will have to ship orders out within 24 hours. After that shipping frenzy is over, I plan to remove all merchant fulfilled items on Amazon (and any items I may be selling on eBay) and then we will be heading off for the holidays for a much needed break and to enjoy time with our family.

With that in mind, I may not write another blog post until the new year so I want to wish every one of my readers a very “Merry Christmas” and a heart felt “Happy New Year!” I hope that it is blessed and prosperous for each and every one of you!

That’s so funny about the daily payouts. I have that option too. Too bad I can’t sell my account because I know there are a ton of people out there that don’t have the option and feel like it’s holding them up! Sorry about your loss.Chris @ Flipping A Dollar recently posted…Thanksgiving and Black Friday Deals Galore!

I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a black market for these types of accounts. Since you have one, I’m actually surprised that you haven’t dabbled in FBA yet. 🙂 Anyways, thanks for your condolences.

Sorry for your loss Yolanda. I know how it is to lose a loved one around the holidays. I just started FBA in October and I love it! My husband and I plan on sourcing more together and reinvesting the bulk of our profits to build our inventory and potential profits. Thanks for sharing and I wish you continued success. Merry Christmas to you and your family:-)